Red Shuriken
by Ariel Hayes
Summary: The story of a young girl caught up in a struggle that is not hers which leads her on a journey to becoming one of the turks youngest senior member, and eventually to saving the world. This first chapter tells of her family's struggle with Hojo.


**Author: Ah, I'm sorry that it's been so long since I have uploaded anything to I promise that I have much more stories to upload, especially for FF7. This is based on the Shuriken TURK of Before Crisis. Look her up sometime for more info if you want it. Oh...uh..Warren, do your thing.**

**Warren: Hojo, shuriken female, ShinRa, and everything in between is property of Square Enix and does not belong to the writer.**

**Author: Cept the name of the Shuriken girl...**

**Warren: Not even that. Square Enix owns your soul.**

**Author: Huh...they probably do...**

**Warren: On with da fic!**

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**Red Shuriken**

It was a very long time ago, but I remember still what happened during those last few days on Gaia. I remember being a TURK wielding a shuriken now that I have regained many of the memories of my old life that I used to have, but the strongest memory that I have always had is something entirely different…something I held onto with what was left of my will…

I died

That was the first thing I remembered and it was the only thing that wasn't washed away from my memory from the direct contact of the lifestream. How did I get this way? How did I die? Despite the lifestream's effects on my mind, I remembered other things of my past later on. Those memories came back to me in reverse order, from most recent to most distant. It was as if my mind were rewinding a videotape recording in my head.

My story begins when I was very small during the beginning of the war with Wutai. I was four, maybe five when it happened. My parents worked for ShinRa as Ecological researchers. They were researching the effects of mako on the environment, especially on plants. I never got to see the research much as a child, and it wasn't until I was older that I would find what was left of their research and what they discovered with all their work. What I found in my old home was that they had discovered that by adding a small amount of mako and water to plants made the plants flourish, but when they used soil that was from places where the mako was sucked dry from it yielded no plants. Even with the addition of water to the poor soil could not make the plants grow. To put it bluntly, the soil was dead.

My parents threatened to turn their results public if ShinRa didn't stop what they were doing to the earth. It was around this point that a strange man with oily black hair and a lab coat started showing up around the house talking to my father. He wanted to know more about my dad's research and the results. I first saw them in a diner at Kalm talking to each other about the effects of mako on living matter. I stayed well hidden so that they couldn't see me. That strange creepy man was somebody who I knew in my heart we couldn't trust.

My mother knew it, too. She told father that he shouldn't be telling their research in full detail to such a man. My father replied that "that man" was head of the Science Department and had he no choice. They argued about it for a while. ShinRa continued to ignore their requests to stop the mako reactors and instead thanked them on their discovery. They said that their research proved that places that were very fertile were also rich in mako energy.

One day they both decided to try and find a publisher for their work so that they could distribute their findings more easily to the citizens of Midgar and put an end to the reactors. It was on this day that the army came with that strange man in the lab coat. My father shouts, "How dare you come in our home with armed men?" and the creepy man just snickers and replies, "Why, I am on official business to retrieve your research from you and store it away for safe keeping." My father lunges forward so that he's face to face with this man and yells that he can't do that, but the creep just tells him that as head of the science department he can confiscate his work.

My father turns to get his research from his desk, but instead of giving up the papers he resists telling them that if they want to take his research notes from him that they will have to take it over his dead body. He tried ordering them out of his house after that, but that strange man didn't take too kindly to his words. That weird man instead got angry and ordered the soldiers to open fire. I saw it all take place from behind the kitchen door. The bullets tore through their bodies too easily and it seemed too quick that they had gone from being alive to being dead. They fell in slow motion to the floor, the bloodied, bullet hole filled bodies of the two Ecologists that had raised me and loved me. The shock hit me instantly, and I didn't want to believe that they had died. They couldn't have been torn from my life so quickly and easily without so much as a goodbye. It wasn't fair and it didn't feel right.

I couldn't stop the tear flow, and they weren't moving or saying anything anymore. The creepy, cruel man had stolen my father's research papers right from his cold dead hands and he was laughing. He was laughing with that awful cackle of his. It wasn't enough for him though. He turned to the soldiers "Burn the house down. Oh, and be sure to destroy all of the research equipment." I didn't understand what they were doing, but the men had left and I was given the chance to go to my parents. "Mother, father…please wake up. Don't leave me." I nudged my mother and tried to wake her from her eternal sleep, but I found the effort to be useless. I cried over their bodies and didn't notice the fire until it was expanding all around me. I took my father's lab coat and crouched down to avoid the falling sparks and debris. I had to take the nearest exit and the only place I could choose was the back door since I didn't want to risk the strange, creepy man finding me and killing me too.

I went as fast as I could through those flames. Bright flames flickered and struck out almost like a living being trying to consume me along with the house. The flames were everywhere, they curled around the stairs and clung to the walls and ceiling. Only parts of the floor provided an open path for me. I ran forward through it all and got hurt in the process. Something sharp and wooden had scratched my leg and cut the lab coat. I kept going though, because I was determined to live. I used the lab coat on the doorknob and was able to open the back door without harm. I ran a few feet away into the cool green spring grass and the moist night air, but couldn't go much further and only fell down on the ground in pain. The cut had gone deeper than expected and I was feeling the pain from it now. I fell forward and cried with my face in the grass. The sky wept with me as well. The rain would soon reduce the flames to nothing and I was lucky that my house was not totally wiped off the face of Gaia. Though now I thought that all I wanted was to forget and make the pain go away.

I tried getting up and used the lab coat as a shield from the rain pulling it over my head with both my hands. I limped away from my home in search of something to make the pain stop. I was running away from all of this. It had been too much, and all I could do was limp onward in a straight line. About a mile or two away from where my home used to be I met a young couple that would take me to Midgar. They felt sorry for me, but could not afford to take care of me. So, I ended up in an orphanage with others like myself who had lost parents or run away from their homes. I wasn't so alone now, but the pain still pulsed within my chest. That day would come back every now and then and the memory of their death haunted me. I missed them. I needed my family.

Years went by with me in that place. It was unfortunate for us that the orphanage had been in the slums, but, to us, there was nothing to fear as long as we had each other. We were all somewhat close, but I was the best of friends with an odd boy named Ryo. Oh, but that's a very long story for another time.

**End**

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**Author: Hope you enjoyed that little part of the story, and if you did, review...**

**Warren: There's more where that came from, so check out the next part later!  
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